


Backstage

by isafil



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe, Drugs, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Johnlock - Freeform, Lemon, Light BDSM, M/M, Music, Musicians, Slash, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Songwriting, mystrade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 15:50:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16495670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isafil/pseuds/isafil
Summary: In the throes of composition, Sherlock Holmes is a musician in the middle of a professional depression, after having been at the top of the charts for two years. John Watson is an emergency doctor in a London hospital, but since he returned from the war wounded, wounded and exhausted, he has found refuge in his passion for writing on his blog.  Luck… fate...  will bring them together. Will the encounter between a singular and whimsical musician and a budding author be the spark that will allow everyone to exorcise their personal uncertainties, doubts, fears, past? Will the exceptional alchemy between the texts of one and the music of the other lead them to an elsewhere that they no longer hoped for?





	1. Fiasco

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Janyss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janyss/gifts).



> As a preamble, and because this fic would never have been possible without them, my thanks go to Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat for their prodigious rewriting of the work of the immense Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of characters that have become myths through literature, cinema and all other types of fiction.... Some would say today icons...
> 
> This story would not exist either without a fictitious story that I think everyone here knows if he is an Alternate Universe fan. I am of course referring to Mad_Lori's "Performance in a leading role"... More than 650,000 readings to date... Some Goncourt Prizes would like to have this list! I hope my story will pay tribute to Mad_Lori's story, will be worthy of her talent and her own performance !
> 
> This fic was written in French. The translation is based on Deepl, an automatic platform for translation. An american friend has edited and reviewed the text. Deepl and Lauri have done their best, but, of course, you will find some frenchs idioms, approximations, mistakes ... Apologies. If someone want to improve the text, he or she is welcome !
> 
> Finally, I dedicate this piece to my co-writer who has opened up the fields of possible fanfics for me. Thank you Janyss !

_Where is he? Where is he?_

 An unpleasant sensation lodged in the hollow of **his** stomach, Gregory Lestrade imperceptibly opened the dark curtain that separated the stage from the overheated room, now plunged into darkness. The control room had turned down the lights. The small group of fans **(** faithful beyond all past disappointments, were already pressing ahead, chanting the name of the idol **,** taking picture **s** of everything and anything,) the microphone in front of the curtain, the huge speakers hanging on either side of the stage, the projectors sweeping the audience in every direction.  A score that had slipped to the ground seemed to attract the lust of Tim, a fan. From where he was, Greg could see his silhouette dressed entirely in white, probably as a tribute to the cover of the last album.  The young man had leaned on the edge of the stage, he was about to climb up, and only the two hands of a friend who held him firmly behind, constituted the rampart that prevented him from rushing **to** the sheet. He would have given anything, Greg thought, to get the precious object that the musician's hand had touched. As usual, the artistic agent could not help but feel an ambivalent feeling of surprise and annoyance, almost anger.   

_So much love, so much madness.... For what, after all?  What a waste..._

Looking a little further away, Greg looked down at the bottom of the floor, half empty. It was predictable. The ticket office had been bad. The sales of the last single, after the enthusiasm of the first week, had returned... Of course, a certain cultural press had praised what it called a conceptual rock of the very first magnitude, but the popular tabloids had gone wild against the composer... In the worst tabloids of London, there had been violent, inappropriate and indecent criticism of the artist's escapades, his personality considered ambiguous, the deplorable example that his excesses caused in some young people. His words were considered haughty, contemptuous. During his last interview, the musician could not hide his contempt for the journalist who was questioning him. Sherlock’s sharp eye had been on the man's worn out and badly ironed jacket, his shaky hands, his slightly cracked lip, a bruised eye that he hid behind sunglasses, his alcoholic breath and the pile of documents on his desk with a registered letter on top. In a supremely condescending tone, he had dropped at full speed: 

"Your wife just left you, you got drunk last night because you realized she was going to go elsewhere, you got beaten up by her new boyfriend and your tabloid  wants to fire you. No wonder, on your own, with your questions, you will lower the IQ of the entire editorial staff!

The journalist had leapt above his desk with a deadly look, haunting heavily, seized with rage, but the musician, with an iron fist that one would not have guessed at his high and fragile figure, grabbed his arm and violently twisted it back, tackling the man to the wall and whispering in his ear:

 "Do you really want me to give you a boxing lesson? » 

Greg closed the stage curtain with a nervous hand and turned to the back. There were only three musicians on stage, a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer. The production had chosen an extremely bare staging, all the audience's attention should be focused on the artist, on his low and deep voice. 

"Greg," began the guitarist, in an exasperated voice, "it's no longer possible... we should have started forty minutes ago. Do you hear them? They'll break everything if he..."

But Greg cut it off and asked his assistant in a white voice who, coming from the side slide, had moved towards him.

 "Sally...? He left his question open. Years of close collaboration around the composer had made words useless. Sally shook her head in a denial movement. 

 "It's been two hours since anyone's seen him, Boss. He was there for the rehearsal of the connection between the sixth and seventh song, you know that sequence he doesn't like, on the word mine. He missed it three times and left like a madman. And since then, nothing. The make-up artist waited for him, but..." and she stopped at these words, in a way where worry took precedence over everything else. 

 Clenching his fists, Greg looked at the other two musicians and asked them if they knew anything more. Behind the curtain, you could hear the fans' cries becoming louder, more insistent, almost hypnotic. And over the voices, you could hear the clapping of the hands that would grow **to a** crescendo and rise into a paroxysm of desire 

_Where is he? Where is he?_

 Greg, his stomach tied by anxiety, turned again to Sally Donovan, who looked at him with a sorry and helpless look. The artist had never done this to them before. They had had everything else... panics, whims, anger, but he always showed up on stage at the scheduled time. Always.

Shouting at everybody, Greg asked in a tense voice.

 "Nigel, the doorman at the artists' entrance, was asked if he had left? » 

 "I would have told you, Boss..." reproached (him almost) Sally. And she repeated, "No, no one has seen him.  With the guys from the hardware assembly and security, we looked everywhere, the dressing rooms, the two basements, the toilets... He is nowhere," she added in a breath where Greg could now perceive, more than anxiety, the first signs of panic. 

_He's capable of anything... Where is he?_

 In an instant, Greg made his decision. In the microphone and earpiece that connected him to the stage manager, he whispered in a dry and fast voice. 

 "Liam, we find Ed fast and we throw him in the first part. He's ready backstage. You put Projo 1 on him. That'll give us 30 minutes to find..."

He didn't even have to finish his sentence that everyone had already understood and was setting up. 

 "Sally, you're handling the scene...? I, I..." He stopped, carried his hand to his phone, which was vibrating insistently in his pocket. 

**Is there a problem? MH**

Greg grinned, a blow to the heart, as he saw the message appear on the screen. His interlocutor may have been on the other side of the Atlantic to sign a new contract, but he always seemed to have antennas when it came to his brother.

_No, Myc, there's no way you're going to let yourself be destroyed again_

Greg quickly pianoted on his laptop screen. 

**Aren't you supposed to be sleeping, Myc, considering the time your meeting ended? Sleep ! GL**

And he cut off his phone.  It was a poor parade. He knew of course that Mycroft would not be fooled for long, but he had to deal with the most urgent. 

_Forgive me, my love_

"Sally, I may have an idea where he might be. “

Sally looked at him with an intrigued eye, looking for an answer, but Greg had already grabbed the musician's scarf, placed on a stool near the instruments, (had already) left the stage and rushed like a madman backstage **(to whom)** **to** the door that led to the back of the stage. 

_Not that, please, not that again._

With his heart pounding, he threw himself towards the stairs that led to the roof of the concert hall. That was only placewhere he could have found refuge, since Sally and the guys had searched the theatre from top to bottom. Swallowing the steps at full speed, Greg soon reached the top, short of breath.

_Won_

The door was slightly ajar allowing a cold draft to pass through. The winter spittle had soaked the threshold and Greg was forced to step over the puddle that had formed to venture onto the platform that was bathed in darkness. The clouds concealed the moon, and the place, bristling with chimneys, seemed deserted.  The blue neon lights of the theatre flashing just below illuminated the whole area with a pale glow. At a quick glance, Greg scanned the solitary place. From where he was, however, Greg could not see the entire platform. A duct higher than another in front of him, hid from him the whole part of the roof that gave onto the facade. He moved a little further forward and in an instant he was soaked by another bitter gust. Fighting against the wind, his hand above his eyes to shield against the rain, he took an uncertain step towards the part of the roof that was still hidden from him. There was no point in calling. The gusts would have covered the sound of his voice. He could only move forward against the wind, taking care not to slip over the puddles that flooded the ground. Suddenly, his foot caught in a cable, hidden in the dark, and he almost fell. He clung to a chimney as best he could, swearing, and it was at that moment that he saw him from behind, a little further away, sitting on the low wall on the facade at the edge the roof.  

_Sherlock_

 An intense wave of relief seized him and he leaned against the chimney for a moment, his legs suddenly barely carrying him. He didn't have time to wonder about the reasons for the fear, no, rather the panic that had been in his mind for too long **(minutes)** now. He saw the silhouette sitting on the low wall, his legs hanging in the void, moving slightly.  The brief moment of relief was overwhelmed by an even stronger wave of fear than before. 

_Sherlock... no... no.._

He approached as close as he could, ready to jump up and grab the sleeve of the long coat in which the musician was wrapped. He was close enough now to be heard and he was about to call Sherlock when he, without turning around, whispered in a tired voice. 

"Not now, not now. I... Leave me alone, Greg. "And as he said these words, the young man came a little closer to the edge. 

Greg stopped suddenly; he was less than five meters away from Sherlock, and could guess that under the coat shivers made the musician tremble. The questions would come later. For the time being, the only priority was to get the young man back to the back of the roof, safely away from the low wall plunging into the void and from where Sherlock could slide at any time. Confirming his voice - there was no way Sherlock was going to hear how terrified he was - Greg whispered softly right behind him:

"All right, Sherlock, all right... I'll leave you to it.  I **just** brought you your scarf. You know, the blue one, the one you like..." He left his words hanging, hoping that the young man would turn around and catch him. But Sherlock, without answering, kept his back  **turned** on him. His left hand grabbed the edge of the wall but the right hand was immersed inside the pocket of his coat and Greg could guess under the cloth his clenched fist and so tight that the young man's arm was shaking violently. 

_Not that... pity... not that again_

"Sherlock," Greg continued as he approached a step, "talk to me. You're soaked in the rain. You'll get cold. Come **in** and get warm... come to safety with me." Continuing to speak very softly, Greg took a few more steps towards the musician. The wind had calmed down, the gusts had subsided and he could now hear the young man's choppy breath, still silent, still facing the void. He seemed as if he was withdrawn in himself, without any awareness of the danger. 

_Lost in his memories again...?_

"Sherlock," Greg tried a third time with his voice even lower - and he could almost touch the young man's shoulder - "come on... it's going to be okay now... come (on) with me," he repeated, "look, it's just you and me, there, like at the beginning..."

_Just like at the beginning... before..._

Sherlock, at last, turned his face towards Greg. He was white, his jaw stretched out, his eyes marked with dark circles. 

"It's not what you think, Greg," he said. His words came with difficulty, slowed down, and that, more than the words themselves, completed the panic of Sherlock's agent. "It's just..." The young man's voice took on an even more detached intonation.  "It's just that... all this, all this circus," he made a great gesture pointing to the neon lights in the theatre, "it's just... it doesn't amuse me anymore... it bothers me terribly... you understand... it's not... you know it... you know it..." A kind of grimace lingered on Sherlock's lips. He waved a vague sign to his temple and resumed, on a hard rhythm, which made what he said almost incomprehensible "There is nothing there now, you understand,” and he repeated, with a determined look... “but it's not what you think, Greg. “ 

Suddenly, without Greg being able to do anything, Sherlock stood on the wall, facing the void. 


	2. The fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be careful ... a small passage of light BDSM at the end. If you don't like, dont read.

Five days... for five days he hadn't slept a wink. Even for him, it was getting too much. Molly, his private assistant, had insisted that he try to follow the sleep rhythm that the medical staff recommended. She exhorted him to lie down in the shadows, tempted him with cups of milk sweetened with honey, coddled him with promises of a night without dreams. But he had sent everything away, his nerves raw. This tenuous melodic thread, which he pursued relentlessly and which he knew would be his most intense composition, stubbornly refused to accept him. He was constantly stumbling upon this minor third that broke the line that his inspiration was trying to follow, without success. He was at the end of frustration and anger against himself. The worst part is that he knew very well what could have solved the situation, but the most intimate part of himself refused to do so. The painful image emerges once again.

_No, Victor, no..._

And now, as he was at the height of exasperation, lying down, eyes closed, on his sofa at home on Baker Street, repelling the familiar anxiety that had not failed to form when the painful evocation had imposed itself on his memory. He was nevertheless, on the verge of finding this measure, when Molly, two fingers resting on the earpiece that permanently connected her to the rest of the outreach team, had pressed her hand on his shoulder, breaking by her gesture, however soft and attentive, any possibility of grasping the notes that he had missed. 

"Sherlock, it's time to go to rehearsal. Your driver is waiting for you downstairs. Tom and Fred will keep the fans away. You'll be safe. Greg is already in the room working on the final details. Here, take your scarf for your throat. It's really cold today. And if you could have a cup of tea before you leave, that would be a really good idea, you haven't had anything since last night.” 

The weight of the hand had caused him an unbearable discharge and he had jumped violently, a refusal ready to burst out of his lips. Did he still have the choice not to do the concert tonight?  Did he have even the slightest chance of not going? He felt exhausted, even if he didn't want to agree. The bad sales, the hateful papers in the tabloids, the constant pressure from the public, the paparrazzi, their incessant shootings and their indecent questions...

_So Sherlock, still not attracted to women...? Sherlock, a smile!... Sherlock, it's not too hard, alone...? Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock..._

He could have handled all this. He had done it for years, with bad grace certainly, but he had done it. He had done well. It was part of the job, he whispered on the phone threateningly one night when he blew it all off, after an exhausting concert, the man who held his career in his hands, Charles Augustus Magnussen, the owner of Underground records, the Major to whom he had belonged for three years.

But for a few months, after what had happened with Victor, he felt that he was broken, that the mechanics were broken. Getting out of bed, when he managed to sleep, was sometimes impossible. And when he was finally up, he was so tired, he felt so empty that he absolutely needed something to find some energy. His medical staff provided him with everything he needed, with a complacency that he himself - he was not fooled for a moment - considered indecent, but in the end it was convenient for everyone to close their eyes more or less to the pills he swallowed at every turn. 

_The show must go on..._

Before the defeat of the previous year, he had been one of the biggest record sellers in the country. So, yes, everyone was more or less pretending not to see anything. There was hardly anything but little Molly to try to stand up to him when he asked for two extra pills to sleep or on the contrary to boost himself a little. And of course, there was Greg. He was furious, worried. He hasn't left Sherlock for a minute lately. He threatened to tell his brother everything. And Sherlock begged him not to do anything with it. He knew that if Mycroft knew the extent of what was happening, he would have taken matters into his own hands and kept him away from the studios and the stage. 

_No way I'm going to get fixed up, I don't know where, with a doctor on my back all day long._

"Do you really think, Sherlock, that your brother doesn't see that you're losing it? "Greg asked, looking like he was saying that there was absolutely nothing we could hide from Mycroft. 

It had been a week since the two men had had this conversation. After a really tense studio session where the young man had pulled the drummer out of his hinges, despite his fluctuating moods, Greg and Sherlock had returned to Baker Street, to the tiny baroque and improbable pied-à-terre that the musician wanted to keep near Regent's Park at all costs, despite the magnificent three hundred square metre duplex that the production rented for him in Belgravia and where he was almost ceased to exist since recent events.  In the car, the tension had increased an extra notch between Sherlock and his agent. Greg had closed the window and pulled the curtains so that Rob, the driver, could not hear anything. He had **exceptionally** asked Sally not to follow them. 

"You know that when it comes to you, he has antennas," Greg said again. 

"My brother dear is too busy managing his independent label and giving Magnussen a hard time.” Sherlock **had tried** to create a diversion. 

"Stop it, Sherlock, you know very well that Mycroft has always..." Greg replied, looking furious.  But Sherlock cut **him** off sharply. 

"... Still what? Pull the strings? Manipulated each other?  Fomented his power struggles to keep his label alive in the record company jungle? Gave all the attention, all the energy, I'm talking about sex of course, of which he was capable to a certain..."

"What is this outburst, Sherlock ?  ” asked Greg, whose anger was rising dangerously. What's the point? Why are you attacking me and your brother like this?" You want to hurt us because you and..."

But Sherlock again would not let him continue. Suddenly, his voice became thin and he replied in an almost inaudible breath:

"Stop, Greg, stop... don't go down that path. » 

Greg had understood the message, his anger had deflated and there was nothing left but the dull worry that had not left him since he saw the young man gradually sink. 

_If you only knew, Victor, the evil that..._

The two men had arrived on Baker Street. Sherlock had immediately locked himself in the bathroom. He came out ten minutes later, metamorphosed, a towel barely draped around his hips, fully inflated; he rushed through a pair of black jeans and a plum-fitted shirt; made a vague gesture with his hand towards Greg who was looking at him, stunned, he left the apartment in a hurry and asked Tom, one of his bodyguards to follow him to the Baths, a box where he regularly went. He was only seen again the next morning at seven o'clock, exhausted again. And alone. Photos stolen by fans from the box and published on Instagram had shown him, during the night, with a wild look, his black loops loose, a false laugh mechanically stuck on his face. 

Obviously, in the eyes of everyone lately, he seemed to have become even more capricious than usual, but Sherlock knew deep down that it wasn't that and that there was something else more. Only Greg understood of course. Sherlock had guessed it by his way of being even more vigilant, by his interrogating glances, by his vain attempts to make him talk. 

_Being alone is what protects me_

A week had passed since the crazy evening at the Baths and the tension had only increased as he approached the concert he was to give at the Palladium, a venue he knew by heart and loved especially in ordinary times. But he knew today that, given his inner state, he was in no condition to do so, even if he had to give this concert that very evening. When Molly had gently shaken his shoulder, to give him the signal to leave, he would have done anything not to go. The rehearsal the day before had been a nightmare. Nothing was fine. He had demanded a change of orchestration on Le Lac, the title that opened the concert. He also had to review the sequence on the word mine that linked the sixth and seventh songs. He kept stumbling over the word that he couldn't place correctly. 

A nausea seized him at the idea of this title that Magnussen had imposed. Sherlock composed all the melodies. The texts were not his.  He had a few regular authors who did, for the most part, a very good job. But what the audience and fans were praising, what made his incandescent success, was not so much the lyrics of the songs, it was his voice, very deep, vibrant, which warmed up with its very particular timbre the coldest rooms as well as the melodies he composed, the tonalities, the chord choices that formed a universe whose elegance and originality were admired and cherished. Twice already, he had been nominated for the Brits for the song of the year. But each time, he had been beaten. A few months earlier, Magnussen, who had taken the two successive defeats very badly, had imposed on the production a new lyricist, one of his protégés, from who knows where, a very thin young man with a strong Irish accent.  He had gradually gained more and more importance, exercising a hold on the choice of songs. He was in all your rehearsals, all your work moments. Greg had to be constantly involved to put him back in his role. James Moriarty had a remarkable word intelligence, according to Magnussen. So Greg had been very cautious from the beginning. One thing I don't know about the young artist's behaviour made him very uncomfortable.  But, in the end, did he really have a say? 

"I am a genius of rhyme," Moriarty had sung, in a singular voice, at the time of the presentations. 

Greg had made an inner wince. 

_What, another oversized ego in the team...?_

Sherlock, who, from that first meeting, had collided with him about the words of a chorus he didn't like, could not help but recognize his talent. He was a brilliant author, whose sharp words found the right setting in Sherlock's compositions. The two men had worked together with some difficulty: each one attacking intelligence and sarcasm, each trying to dominate the other but, finally, they had written some songs together. Magnussen had forced his hand on one of them, Mine, a bewitching melody in minor tone on which James had written disturbing words about loving submission. Sherlock didn't want to sing it on stage, it required too much commitment. He had the feeling that **he** was revealing an intimate part of himself that he didn't want to reveal to the public.  But the more he refused, the more **stubborn** Magnussen became. The Major's boss absolutely wanted Mine live. It seemed as if, in addition to the ambitions he put on this title for the next Brits, he was taking some pleasure in seeing Sherlock in trouble. Magnussen, it was a fact known to all, had a certain penchant for suffering. 

Exiting the sofa, Sherlock got up, his head spinning a little. He refused the cup of tea Molly was handing him, grabbed the scarf she was handing him and rushed down the stairs where his two bodyguards, Tom and Fred, were waiting for him. Looking at the sidewalk, he saw that Rob, his driver, was waving to the fans who were camping night and day in front of the black door of 221B. He heard him exclaim. 

"No, boys... not today. »

 But Sherlock, thwarting the planned plan, with a sudden charming smile on his face, stepped forward towards the small group.

"Sherlock, a picture, please, Sherlock," begged a young teenager as he rushed to the musician.

"Again, Tim? But you already have one yesterday! Besides, shouldn't you be in college? "Sherlock felt a certain tenderness for the frail teenager in whom he felt a whole world of fragility. For a few months, Tim had been following Sherlock everywhere. He seemed to have made the musician his star, until he went camping from time to time at the bottom of Baker Street so as not to miss any movement of his idol. Sherlock had been discreetly informed about the teenager. He lived more or less on the street with a network of homeless people and went to college very irregularly.  

"Please, Sherlock..." replied the teenager. 

"Yes, but then you go straight to school," said the musician, ruffling the boy's hair with a light hand. "Promise? "And as soon as the teenager took the shot, Sherlock walked away from him at a fast pace, without looking at him, and rushed into the back of the car, reminding himself to ask Molly to check if Tim had gone back to school. Sally was waiting for him sitting in the front passenger seat. 

"Hello, Sherlock, how are you?" She followed without waiting for the answer. "Greg is already at the Palladium. So is the production. I remind you that tonight's concert is filmed for BBC 4. It's one o'clock. The musicians will be there at 1:30 p. m. "She added with a grin because she knew it was a sensitive subject: "James Moriarty will also be there, too, at the express request of Mr. Magnussen, in case you need a hand to repeat Mine. We'll do the snitch at 2:00. Complete spinning between 3 and 5 p.m. Then you go to the dressing room. Your physiotherapist will be there, taking an hour's nap. Greg wants you to rest and eat. He brought lavender honey for you, the one you love.  Dressing, make-up. At 8:30 p.m., set up. 9:00 p.m. you start on the first track. We're calling the call-backs at 10:50 p. m.  At 11pm we lower the curtain. Press conference and shooting in your dressing room.  Then you go to the BBC news set for the last edition.  And at one o'clock, champagne and then bedtime. Greg's order," she said with a forced smile. "Here, take the earpiece. From now on, you follow the instructions. "During Sally's speech, Sherlock had seemed absent, he was looking straight ahead, very tense. 

"Sherlock, did you even listen? Do you have any questions? "Sally asked.  As for himself, he whispered very softly:

"Because I have a say in all this? "And he added much louder, in a hard voice. 

"Yes, I have a question. Have you thought about my beloved little pills? "Without saying a word, Sally rummaged through her bag and handed **him** a box, looking gloomy and insecure.  Sherlock added, looking her straight in the eye:

"It's just between us, don't bother talking to Greg about it." And he swallowed both pills, throwing his head back. It would be much better in twenty minutes, he thought coldly, as if detached from himself.

 

When they arrived at the Palladium, another group of fans was cranking in front of the entrance and started screaming when they saw the Jaguar coming,

"Rob, go around the theater and stop in front of the door of the building next door. We'll cross through the basements to get to the room," Sally ordered. "I'll go first, Sherlock, you follow me and Rob will cover the back, okay?" she said in a voice that suffered no reservations whatsoever. 

Sherlock finally arrived on the set a good half an hour late. The team was already very tense. There was a crazy world on the stage between the equipment guys who positioned the desks, the lighting designers, the stage manager and the musicians unpacking their personal instruments. When Greg saw Sherlock coming, he sighed with relief, quickly stopped when he looked at the bright eyes and shaky hands that the young man was trying to hide in his pockets.

"Damn, Sherlock, are you okay? You..."

But the musician shortened it with a sudden gesture. 

"Yes, Greg, I'm fine!" he replied strongly so that everyone could hear him.  He turned his back on **him** and whispered, "Why should it be any other way?  It's not like I took anything, is it?" Going towards the musicians, without looking at his agent whose burning look he felt behind him, he questioned them with a rogue tone. "So, let's do this snitch? » 

When, an hour later, the scale was finally finished, Greg was on the verge of panic. Sherlock had been brilliant, incredibly deep in his basses, stroking every chord change of his exceptional baritone, moving from key to key with disconcerting ease. But, if his voice had once again worked miracles, his attitude had been even more detestable than during the last rehearsal, sending everyone back into their ropes. His last spade really threw a cold on the set. He was very good at deducing a lot of embarrassing truths about people, from the most improbable clues, a subway ticket hanging out on a desk, a reflection in a mirror, half-effaced letters on a piece of jewelry, a paper that protruded from a pocket... 

"Damn it, Hugh, stop sending the projo in my face. Just because your wife is sleeping with your banker doesn't mean you have to blind me like that..." 

Sherlock had therefore gone from apathy to a state of unusual overexcitement. On the stage, everyone was making a round back, waiting for the storm to pass. But as the minutes went by, the tension increased and the balance ended in a climate of aggressiveness that did not herald anything good for the spinning that would follow. 

"Fifteen minute break, everyone." Greg announced.  The musicians carefully rested their instruments, the stage manager began to discuss some details with the technical team. Andrew began to circulate among the two of them by distributing sandwiches, coffee and soft drinks. 

"Sherlock, where are you going, like that?" Greg firmly grabbed the wrist of the young man who was already heading backstage. He immediately felt under his fingers the skin too hot and the pulse beating too fast. 

"Oh, please, Greg, I'm just gonna... you know (how to)… satisfy a natural desire," replied Sherlock, in an exasperated voice, trying in vain to free himself, his hand already immersed in the back pocket of his jeans. 

"It's a good thing, too," Greg continued, looking determined. And it was he who passed Sherlock, still holding him tightly, as if he was afraid of losing him. 

Greg locked the room from the inside where the toilets, showers and rest rooms were located. He hadn't let go of Sherlock and it was only when the door was closed that he let him go. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed on his chest and observed the young man who had gone to one of the sinks and looked at him in the mirror, as if he did not dare to face him directly in front of him. 

"Can you explain it to me, Sherlock? What was your number on the set during the snitch? And since we're going to talk about things that are annoying, why do you have to touch your jeans pocket like that? What do you have inside? You think I didn't see your eyes... your hands... Greg asked, very coldly. 

An air of defiance stuck on his face, but without turning around, as if he was refusing to accept a real face-to-face encounter, Sherlock threw:

"So what?"

"And so" Greg repeated, "What are you doing with the team? Don't you think there's enough pressure as it is with tonight's concert? Why are you adding so **much** more?" As Sherlock remained silent, Greg continued. "Have you thought about the implications if we have a bad review tonight?” 

"I don't care! "Sherlock shouted loudly. It was like a teenager being stalked, trapped in his last trenches. 

"Of course you don't care, you only think about yourself, as usual... The others are never your problem, are they? Not even your musicians or Molly of course... You know very well that we're on the edge... Everyone's counting on tonight's concert to get the machine running again. If you keep playing the diva, you'll get yourself killed. And you're going to drag the whole team into your slump... There are people who need to pay their bills, you know... people who do their jobs without swallowing tons of pills. Give them to me," Greg said, stepping forward towards Sherlock who had turned white when he heard the accusations. 

"Leave me alone," the musician scolded. 

"Give it to me now," Greg continued authoritatively, taking another step forward. 

"No way," replied Sherlock..." Don't you understand? You don't understand that I need it," he said in a less confident voice. "I... I have to... I have to..." His voice stopped... And as Greg was now very close to him, the musician, with a quick gesture, grabbed the pills nestled in his pocket and swallowed them, looking his agent in the eyes. "I promise you, it's the last time... It's... It's... It's for tonight, you understand... I have to be in good shape, you know, it was Magnussen who said it," he added with a kind of laugh back. »

Greg looked at the musician - he had lowered his face and splashed it in cool water - he was full of an anger that would have pushed him to slap him, if deep down it wasn't worry that was much more prevalent. It wasn't screaming and violence that was going to help Sherlock at that very moment. He needed something else. He then spoke again very coldly, and because he knew it was a blow that would hurt him very much but might make him think, he added: 

"Well, I see you've been thinking about Tim, you know your young fan... He's going to see you in your best condition tonight... Nice show for a teenager! Well done, Sherlock!” 

As a result of the blow, Sherlock felt shaky and barely made up for it at the edge of the sink. 

"It's very low, Greg... Why do you hurt me like that? »  

"I'll leave you," Greg ends without answering directly, his voice tired, opening the door to get out.  "Since you don't seem to care much about our..." He stopped and then took over "... of all the interest I have in you, I leave you with dear Moriarty for the spinning. One last thing... I'll meet you in your dressing room half an hour before the curtain rises... Please try to eat and sleep for twenty minutes. Look at you. Look at you. You're scary as hell." He closed the door behind him, without slamming it. Sherlock then slowly raised his face towards the mirror. The reflection returned terrified him. Searching his pocket with a shaky hand, he took out an extra pill and swallowed it immediately. Anyway, it no longer had any effect on him. And he needed this to go rehearse Mine with Moriarty. 

The flowerbed was plunged into darkness. The stage manager had already darkened the room. Sally had taken over from Greg and had asked to clear the stage where there were now only Sherlock's three musicians.  

"Do you have your earpiece, Sherlock? You don't see him, but James is in the front row. He supervises the placement of texts.  You start with The Lake, you follow with Silence, then..."

"I know, Sally, we've been rehearsing for two weeks... don't bother mothering me, even if Greg asked you to," cut Sherlock. 

"Hi Sherlock, I heard you went crazy during the balance? sang Moriarty's high-pitched voice, **his** Irish accent pushed to the extreme. 

"Shut up. "You're only here at Magnussen's request and I swear to you..."

"... than what? That you're gonna screw up Mine if I don't help? You know what the boss wants, don't you? He wants you to pull your guts out on this track and I swear to you, you will, even if I have to make your heart a pile of ashes tonight! "said the young man. Sherlock would have jumped on him if Greg's words didn't resonate with him yet. 

I see you've been thinking about Tim, you know your young fan... He's going to see you in your best condition tonight... Nice show, for a teenager...

All the pleasure he took a year ago to sing on stage, to commune with his audience had disappeared, dissolved in the collaboration that his record company imposed on him with this author, the half failure of his last album, the pressure from the fans, the weight of his team's nervousness and, what was more, the feeling that Greg and Mycroft were damn right to be worried for him. Desperately repelling the urge to go slap Moriarty and leave the set, he looked at the drummer and threw the first song with the agreed sign. His voice landed on the first chords, so low and deep that, on the stage, all the tension accumulated during the previous hours seemed to vanish into the notes and the bewitching harmony of the instruments and voice. 

_Love you by the lake_

_Your heart on my breathing body_

The first songs followed one another, almost magically. It was perfect. No need to repeat this or that measure. Sherlock had never been better, thought Sally as she looked at the young man who, with his eyes closed, his throat thrown back, swung backwards, wiggling his hips in such a sensual way that the narrow t-shirt he was wearing that night showed the black line of the down that plunged into his jeans. It seemed as if his hips embodied the words he was singing.

 

_Like the wave, unsolved,_

_I come and go_

_in you_

_and I_

_hold me back_

 

It was on the Mine that everything suddenly went wrong. Moriarty, who had remained completely silent until then, stopped Sherlock at the end of the first verse. 

"Why are you holding back so long, Sherlock? As soon as you attack you on the third bar, it sounds like you're swallowing the word. We can't hear it. Take it from there. »

Deep down, Sherlock knew that the author was right, that he wasn't giving himself enough to this song, that his inflections were still below what they could have been. The text resonated too intimately with him. It was simply unbearable. He was exposing himself. His hands, shaking again, grabbed the microphone, he waved to the drummer to pick it up again. 

_Yours to the end of my body_

_Yours to the end of my life_

"No, Sherlock, do it again, you're hiding again," Moriarty's voice interrupted again. "I know what we're going to do, guys," Moriarty continued, now addressing the guitarist and drummer. "On these two lines, you stop everything. I just want Sherlock and the bass, like..." he hesitated,"... like a heartbeat behind his voice. And you, Sherlock, go down a tone in the octave. You're still a little too high, that's why we can't hear you. Lower down, you won't be able to hold back. »

On the set, everyone held their breath. It was a risky arrangement, especially a few hours before the concert.  Just the voice during the long minutes of the chorus. The lighting was set to the minimum, the scene completely immersed in darkness with just a blue projector on the singer. In this passage, with the new arrangement, there was only him. He had to go deep inside himself to find his last trenches to carry his voice, to offer himself to the public, to give himself entirely. (to himself.) 

A third time, Sherlock did it again. 

"Lower Sherlock," Moriarty cut, "lower, move your hips more. Put your hand in your belt, give the words, live them. You're still holding back." 

On one of the two giant screens that framed the scene, you could see the face of Sherlock who had turned white. He was already sweaty, his brown curls plated on his translucent temples.  Strangely, as if he was no longer really his own, in a kind of second state that did not resemble him, he laid his hand on the belt of his jeans and, leaning on the bass that had resumed, began to swing with his eyes closed, searching for the words. He could feel his heart beating in his throat. A vague nausea on the edge of his lips, the other hand clinging to the microphone so as not to fall, he continued once again.

"No, Sherlock, slammed Moriarty's voice again, it sounds like a puppet, I want a lot more. "And he added in a tone that was as sarcastic as it was ironic: "You know what?   I'm going to tell you something that will help you... when you say yours, think about... _Victor._

The first name appears indecently in the room immersed in an almost absolute silence. Sherlock stopped suddenly. 

 "What did you say? "he asked Moriarty in a suddenly distressed voice.

The young man, still sheltered in the shade of the room, passed his tongue over his lips and very slowly, repeated: 

"Didn't you hear that, Sherlock? When you say yours... I want you to think about Victor. » 

Under the attack, Sherlock stretched himself like a bow, ready to jump and, if these two bodyguards who never left him, even on the set, seeing the crisis coming, had not girded him, he would have jumped to Moriarty's throat. 

"Leave me alone, let me go," he shouted as he struggled under Tom and Fred's merciless grip. 

But it was only much later, when the two men felt him calm and stop, that they loosened their grip. Then slowly straightening up, Sherlock, breathing heavily, threw one last blow towards the room and, without saying another word, took his coat that was lying in a corner and disappeared backstage. Without even hesitating, instead of going down to the dressing rooms, he took the right staircase, the one that went up to the roof of the theatre.  He swallowed the steps four to four, tears blurring his eyes, unable to think, his heart on the edge of his lips. He thought he was going to throw up when he found himself on the terrace immersed in the dark light of the falling evening, swept away by gusts and rain. Raising his collar, he saw a recess near the low wall overlooking the facade and let himself slide to the ground, his back resting against the hardened concrete. Sitting on the floor, he brought his legs back to his chin and curled up on himself, he tried to calm his breathing, while another nausea shook him. 

_Two pills, two pills only, and it'll get better_

Everything mixed in him in a crazy waltz.  Tim's eyes, filled with that crazy devotion that almost scared him... the inspiration that was desperately escaping him... the sales that kept falling... the pills he was taking to feel better... that song, Mine, that put him in a state of intolerable vulnerability every time... Greg, finally, so concerned and yet, he had knowingly hurt his relationship with Mycroft by his inappropriate allusions. Sherlock refused to think more about his brother and Greg. Too much guilt... 

The present reality was simply unbearable, especially when it evoked the one to whom he now seemed to belong - the word did not seem too strong to him - the owner of Underground Records, Charles Magnussen.   He felt as if he had sold his soul to the devil, that he was no longer in control of his own destiny. And for what? He didn't know it himself.    As for thinking about the evening concert, it was out of the question. Shivering under the gusts and spitting, Sherlock brought his long legs closer to his chest again, trying to shield himself from the cold that crept into him. He felt like he was on the edge of the abyss, ready to fall. 

Yet not everything had always been so dark. If he had been more honest with himself, he would have known exactly when the hellish spiral began that led him to tonight’s fiasco.

_Victor..._

A burning image suddenly emerges in him. Victor, imperious, superb, dictating to him gestures that he would not have been able to find alone. Victor imposing his law, devouring him with caresses, forbidding him pleasure.  Victor pressing his hands relentlessly on his loins to make him bow and open more. Sherlock, kneeling before him, his mouth open, welcoming his pleasure. Victor, his throat stretched to the extreme, thrown back, his hard and authoritative hands in his hair, a single word to his mouth as pleasure swept through him as he deprived his lover of it. 

_Mine_

A deaf complaint crosses Sherlock's lips. He didn't know how long he had been on the roof. Stumbling on his numb legs, he walked towards the low wall at the edge of the open-air terrace, which formed a pathetic protection against the vacuum, sat on the cold concrete and dropped his legs down. 

Staring at the street that appeared to him from where he was like a tiny strip on which the luminous points of the cars seemed to slide, like mechanical toys, he suddenly heard a noise, twisting his pocket again in search of a last stamp. Of course, it could only be Greg. 

"Not now, not now. I... Leave me alone, Greg." said Sherlock, who, more than anything at the time, wanted to be alone. He knew of course Greg wouldn't comply. He was not surprised when he heard his friend tell him in a voice that he wanted to be very calm but in which anxiety was crackling:  

"All right, Sherlock, all right... I'll leave you to it. Just I brought you your scarf. You know, the blue one, the one you like..."

Everything then happened very quickly. While Sherlock answered him and stood on the wall to turn around and take the scarf, Greg, probably deceived by Sherlock's reckless gesture, jumped towards him and rushed to grab him and take him into shelter. But carried away by his momentum and slipping on the water-covered coping, with a choked cry, looking at Sherlock as if he didn't understand what was happening to him, Greg fell into the void. 


	3. Collision

It was the feeling of a gust of wind bringing sand into his eyes that brought John back to the dunes of Kandahar. It was already late. He was crossing Postman's Park to get to  Barts where he was on duty that night. An additional day had been added, similar to all the days he had spent since his return..

At first, it was terrible. Returning at dawn from the hospital in the already crowded subway.  The stairs of his apartment he was climbing, his gait heavy, pulling his leg. A tea swallowed standing up quickly. A toast, half of which he was throwing away. The shower would have been welcome if it had not been the worst time to confront   **his** body. He avoided looking at his shoulder in the mirror. The injury was too recent. Even if he was no longer in pain, he could not look at the damaged flesh without hearing the laughter of his torturer and the words coming out of his mouth in Dari, promising inevitable pain.

  _assab ma ra kharab kardi_

His hollowed eyes, when he looked at himself to shave, told him about the months of hospitalization, the suffering, the temptation of the Sig he had kept illegally. When he was washing, he could feel the bones of his hips. He carefully avoided passing his hand over his sex any longer than hygiene required. Anyway, even when he woke up, he was flabby. The burning of the water could not remove the impression of dirt. He rubbed his skin to the blood to get rid of the smell that didn't leave him, he thought, the smell of sweat-soaked leather from his boots and the holster from his gun.  Sleep was no more restorative. His therapist, Ella, had been so worried about the curves that she asked him to draw that John had ended up lying a little, and then finally a lot. He had gotten into the habit of sleeping on the living room sofa, facing the door, with his hand on the stick, his index finger on the trigger, his face against the pillow that smelled like the grease of the gun and absorbed the tears, at the time of the worst nightmares.  He may have known that he was completely safe since his return, but he simply couldn't sleep any other way. He did not allow himself the softness and warmth of a bed that, in any case, he no longer shared with anyone.

When he woke up, he needed a period of time to rebuild himself, especially on nights when the shadows brought him back to Sholto and Fayaz and in Pashto, he heard the pleas of the wounded. Ella had given him a protocol to follow. Open your eyes. Let the light in. Breathe deeply. And get up right away. Move. Breathe again. Drink as much as possible. Bar what he had done to measure the actions accomplished. Get dressed. He had 30 minutes for this ritual. He clung to the watch dial like a drowned man at a lifebuoy. And the whole day was sequenced like that. Ella had told him that soon he would find his own rhythm, that the desires would follow, that he was for the moment in between. He had to accept to give himself time, allow himself pleasure, allow himself to live. She had advised him to open a blog and write down what he was doing. He had been standing in front of a blank page for weeks.  He had seen a few former buddies of his rugby team again, gone to rehabilitation meetings for former soldiers, performed night shifts three times a week at Barts' emergency room, held a duty at the local infant clinic every Monday, but he felt that he was doing nothing, that his life had remained there in the Afghan mountains, in those villages bombed by shelling where he was trying to calm the terrified screams of children when he took the enemy machine gun from their wounded bodies.

So it was the dunes of Kandahar and its starry vault that he had started to tell on his blog. And even more, the sweat, the blood, the embraces torn from the surrounding fear, the violent kisses given in the dread of a death that could happen at any moment, the bodies that sought  in pleasure **,** to forget the present horror. And it had worked. Since he put his words to all this day after day, a distance seemed to have set in. Of course, he carefully avoided mentioning James Sholto, his musky smell, his confidence.  He wasn't ready. Would it ever be ?   But on the rest, yes, on almost everything else, he put words in and, for the last few weeks, even if he kept sleeping facing the door, just in case, he was better. His words, on the Internet, had even crossed the path of those who had experienced the same thing and his blog and twitter account @JHW, was a definite success. His last text had exceeded ten thousand views.

  _There are children standing here_

_Arms outstretched and stretched towards the sky_

_Tears drying on their faces_

Today was a very ordinary day. The few hours of sleep had not been so bad. He's known  worse. Because he did not yet trust himself, he had performed his ritual with care.

_Thank you, Ella._  

After swallowing some toast, his eyes riveted on twitter, he went to his physiotherapist, a mischievous, very big guy whose precise hands gently played his joints and gradually gave him flexibility and fluidity.

  _Sholto's hands all over me_

 In the doctor's office, he suddenly felt dizzy. He had wavered and would have fallen if the physiotherapist, always vigilant, had not caught up with him and laid him down on a bed.

 "John, are you all right? Talk to me".

Chris' voice reached him with difficulty through the rustle of his own heartbeat.  For a very short time, he had no longer been in that white room, but in that hot barrack where he had found refuge with Sholto and Fayaz, between two bombings. But he recovered very quickly and straightened up,  a smile on his lips.  

 "Yes, Chris, it's okay, it's nothing, just a little bit tired," he whispered in a voice he wanted to keep light **.**

No fooled, the physiotherapist had gently pushed him back on the bed and told him to take a few minutes off, while keeping a close watch on him. The treatment session had then resumed its normal course.  It had left him tired but he was recovering quite well. He could soon, the professional told him, move from a few night shifts in the hospital to a full-time job. Why not in that clinic where he could take care of the little ones ?  His sweetness, his smile were wonderful, according to his colleagues.

By chance, when he got home, he ran into a college friend, Mike Stamford, and they talked, at first with some embarrassment, especially when Mike asked him about his injury. And then quite quickly, Mike told him that he was looking for someone at the firm, that maybe he could hire him.

"But you still have to get back on track a little bit before," he slipped in and gave him a hug when he left. "You look...," he suddenly looked for his words, careful not to overdo it,"... exhausted".  John had grumbled under the pressure of both the strong grip and the remark that brought him back to a past he was trying to overcome. He had greeted Mike a little too quickly and went back to his apartment.

He had a little bit of freedom left before he went on duty at twenty-three o'clock in the hospital. Feeling vaguely guilty, he decided to skip the meal; he would have time to swallow something just before leaving for work. He had spent the late afternoon on his blog, typing on his keyboard. He had an idea in mind, but he knew that it would only come to life once he had started writing. It was the words that embodied the sensations that were going through it. In a perfectly reciprocal movement, inspiration and writing gave birth to each other and responded to each other. Once again, the familiar images came back as soon as he started writing.

 I _rreparable burned houses_

_The smell of death is in the air_

 He had long since lost consciousness of time when a message from Keira, the regulator of the Barts Emergency Department, brought him back to the present moment.

  **Can you come now? It's hell out here. K**

  **Don't worry about it. I'm on my way. JW**

 John noticed that it was getting dark. Stretching his back and arms, numb by the forced immobility of the last few hours, he glanced at the statistics, grabbing his jacket.  His last text had already collected an incredible number of "like" and comments. One of them, signed SoldierForever, caught his attention.

  _Hey, man, it feels like you're in my head, in my heart, in my veins._

 Smiling for himself, John gently closed his keyboard. He would respond to this comment later. For the time being, he had to ignore all this. It was something he had learned to do, to separate his writing moments from his professional tasks. The night promised to be particularly long at the hospital. 

 

                                              xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

Barts' emergency room looked like a real battlefield that night. A car accident involving four vehicles caused many injuries; a couple was crying in a corner near a stretcher completely covered with a sheet; the waiting room was crowded, both corridors were cluttered with patients sitting in wheelchairs or lying on stretchers, waiting to be taken care of by doctors in the care boxes.

 "Ah, John, thank you for coming on such short notice!  You've already been in the locker room, I see. Great ! Great! It's horrible tonight," Keira  whispered in his ear, handing  him a stethoscope. "As if the car accident wasn't enough ! Here, take box number 3, a guy just arrived two minutes ago.  The girls are already taking her vitals.  "And she added, handing him the patient's file. "you'll see, it's weird ... his entourage". And she pushed the young doctor towards the door of the box in front of which stood a man, who was like a kind of barrier and carefully checked the immediate surroundings of the room. Amazed, John took a quick look at the title of the file.

_Gregory Lestrade, H, 43 years old, falling from a roof_

John pushed the man aside and entered the box where the insistent sound of a heart monitor, beeping regularly, greeted him. At a quick glance, he integrated all the details: a young brown woman, standing next to the patient, asking the nurses for information; the man lying on the examination table, eyes half-closed, a safety collar already placed around his neck, a wound open on his temple; in a corner of the box, two tall guys overlooked another man, sitting on the floor, head between his knees. John could only see an angular silhouette and a mass of brown curls, but he immediately felt the labored breathing and the shaky hands.

 "Julia, you can drive everyone out, please ?"  John asked one of the nurses.

 "No way," replied the young brunette woman who was standing next to the wounded in an authoritative voice. However, she moved away from the table where he was lying to let the doctor examine  him. ”It's a matter of safety," she said, waving her hand at the man sitting on the floor. "This person... William...", she continued,"... William must not...," she looked for his words"... cannot..." But it stopped as the monitor made a more insistent noise. John had already contacted the patient anyway and was engaged in the first investigations.

 "Can you tell me what happened ? "he asked the young woman. 

"My boss fell off a roof. Fortunately, his fall was stopped almost immediately by a construction scaffold that was miraculously against the facade of the building; he finally fell only three metres high but still lost consciousness...".  While Sally continued her explanations, John was able to make a rather reassuring initial diagnosis. Glasgow's score was satisfactory. The patient was likely suffering from a minor head injury, two fractured ribs and a broken ankle, but nothing more. It would be good for a few weeks of convalescence and rest. For the time being, the most urgent thing was to suture the wound, which was bleeding heavily, despite the bandages.

"Mr. Lestrade, can you hear me? Can you open your eyes ? I'm Dr. Watson, your doctor. Open your eyes, please, Mr. Lestrade".

John rubbed his patient's sternum firmly to make him come to. With a moan of pain, he finally opened his eyes. As he tried to hold his hand towards his temple, which obviously made him suffer a lot, John gently stopped his gesture.

 "No, don't touch; we'll give you something for the pain. It's going to be okay. You don't have anything too serious. How are you feeling?  Do you know where you are?  Look at me. Can you tell me your first name?" And when his patient didn't answer, John insisted.  "Tell me your name. "He bent down to grasp the murmur that was leaking from the lips of the wounded man.

 "Myc..." heard John. The doctor looked up, surprised and his eyes crossed Sally's. "But I thought it was Gregory," he asked, showing the file.

 The young woman leaned over to Greg who was looking at her, his eyes glassy, without realizing where he was, it seemed.

 "Myc," he repeated, "Myc..." ,he began to shake and push back the sheet that covered him.

 "Calm down, Greg, calm down. He's coming. We'll call him." Sally glanced at the skinny man still sitting on the floor, his back resting against the wall and his hands shaking all the time. One of the guys who had been overhanging him a little earlier had knelt next to him and, at Sally's silent request, searched his wet coat pocket and handed him his phone. The man fingered frantically a short message.

  **Need you here. Quickly. SH**

 The answer was immediate.

  **Is that Greg? I'm on the first plane. MH**

 Without raising his head, still silent, the man showed Sally the phone and she leaned back towards Greg, whispering a few words in the wounded man's ear, who gradually calmed down. During this exchange, John had prepared a suture kit. The gestures repeated a thousand times in the Afghan desert gave him an assurance that everyone felt.

He approached Greg who was shivering and had closed his eyes.

 "Are you cold, Mr. Lestrade? It's normal, it's the shock; it'll get better in a few minutes. Wait, I'll fix it. "He waved at the nurse who covered the wounded with a light blanket. "This is what we're going to do now.  I'll give you a mild sedative to help you relax and I'll suture your wound, while Julia and Kathy cast your ankle, okay? ».

Positioning the scialytic **,** the doctor undertook the delicate task that required great dexterity. The wound was very deep. As he injected with local anesthetic and Greg gradually fell asleep under the effect of the sedative, the doctor could hear the dark haired  man still sitting on the floor breathing too fast.

 "William, are you all right?" he asked.  When the latter did not answer, John looked at Sally with an interrogatory look, and Sally gave him a look where anxiety and exasperation were disputed. For the next half hour, John sutured the wound in complete silence. Only the banged breath of the man sitting on the ground was heard, further disturbing the doctor.  As soon as Greg's wound was closed and a final examination reassured him about his patient's condition, John whispered in a firm voice.

 "Now it's your turn, William, okay? »

 "Leave me alone," said the young man, cowering further. "Anyway, we take Greg and leave. "And he signaled to the two bodyguards who were with him all the time to establish a barrier between him and the doctor.

 "Oh, that would surprise me," John whispered as he knelt down, despite the presence of bodyguards, near the young man and grabbed his wrist. What he found under his hand only confirmed his concerns. A fast, elusive pulse, which already told him what he suspected from the beginning.

 "Sh..., but Sally pulled herself together,... William, don't be a child, let Dr. Watson take a look. Besides, it's this Greg would like. You owe him that, don't you? "Sally then added in a white voice. "Whoever you recognize, Doctor, you are bound by the most absolute secrecy, aren't you? »

  _Who do I recognize? What the hell is going on here ?_  

 "William ?" John asked, warning the young man that he would touch him more. "Would you mind lifting your face up? »

 And when the latter did not react, John, carefully lifted up the young man's chin. A face of singular beauty, ravaged by tears, offered itself to him. It was like a collision, not with features he didn't recognize at all, but with two icy blue irises whose dilated pupils said too much. John felt pierced through and through. The two men looked at each other without saying a word, one lost in the other's eyes.

 It was the man sitting on the floor who suddenly broke the silence:

 "Afghanistan or Iraq? »

 


	4. Mirrors

It was a burning heat in the most intimate part of himself that suddenly woke Sherlock up. His left arm was thrown on the pillow above his head, but his right hand was on his sex, which had not been so sensitive for months. In the room darkened by the curtains that barely let the daylight through, without him really being aware of it, still half asleep, he let his hand wander, almost in spite of himself, in a slow and caressing movement and, as the heat increased, a surprising question gradually emerged from his consciousness. Since Victor, he had not had to stop himself from doing what his lover, jealous of his pleasure, forbade him what he had accepted, more or less willingly, but finally by submitting to the request. Since then, no spontaneous desire had manifested itself. Their last moments had been so tormented that all desire seemed to have abandoned him, as if his body had guessed the inner wound still raw.

But today, in the silence of his room, as the heavy sleep of the sedative he had been given the day before in Barts hardly left him, his fingers had wrapped themselves around his erect sex and gave him increasingly rapid movements that tore off a moaning made of pleasure and discomfort mixed. His eyes then opened and he became more clearly aware of the heat radiating between his widely open thighs. The blurred image of a face he didn't recognize was floating inside him and accentuated the desire to push his hips up, while his hand came and went all the way back and forth and dwelt in the most sensitive and already wet spot.  The sound of his panting breath finished waking him up completely. With a sudden grin of displeasure against himself, Sherlock stopped completely and forced himself to inhale deeply.

_Afghanistan or Iraq ?_

In an uncontrollable wave, the events of the last two days came back to hit him hard. Tim's words begging him for a picture, Moriarty's sarcasm during rehearsals, the concert fiasco cancelled at the last minute, Greg's surprised eyes looking at him without understanding as he plunged into the void, his bloody temple violently lit by the scyalitic. But beyond all the images that came spinning inside him without him being able to block it, it was the feeling of the doctor's hand on his wrist and the warmth of his smile that he still perceived in him. Greg's fall, his injuries had taken precedence over everything else while he was in the ambulance with him. Waves of panic and guilt were shielding his own discomfort. He was not aware of his shattered breath, made laborious by the pills he had swallowed all day before the concert to help him hold on, nor of the dark circles that highlighted the exhaustion of his face, nor even the intense shaking that was shaking his hands.

But obviously this emergency doctor from whom he had deduced the military past at first sight on his haircut, the complexion of his face, and his stiff shoulders thrown back, had not fallen for it. Sherlock understood right away that he had not recognized him at all.  His notoriety did not seem to have reached the dunes of the Afghan desert. Of course, London tabloids of the worst kind, those who flooded their ones with photos stolen at the worst moments of their lives, were not to find their way in the planes that brought mail to the battlefields. The doctor had just focused on his task. He had Sally and the bodyguards out while Greg was being taken to another floor.  The singer had tried to get away from this grip of both firmness and sweetness, but the doctor did not let him go until he checked that the overflow of pills did not put him in immediate danger. He had not asked more questions than necessary, had left them aside, had listened to his heart for a long time, had laid him down on the ground, had asked him to inhale and exhale regularly at his own pace.

_Do I look that freaked out?_

And when the singer's breathing seemed to have returned to a more acceptable rhythm, the doctor carefully placed his stethoscope back on his chest, held his shoulders down as Sherlock tried to straighten up.

"Not yet, William," he whispered. There... give yourself some time. You came very close, you know. He had continued to examine him, his hands assured on his neck, under his arms. A grimace had appeared on his lips as he gently palpated his thin belly and ribs that protruded under the chopped breath but he continued with a light voice his reassuring words. "There... There... slowly, breathe with me... »

Sherlock's eyes did not leave the doctor's face. There was a charming smile there, but also a whole world, made of both light and shadow. And the musician, so quick to usually deduce, a whole lifetime at a glance, found something completely indecipherable in those deep blue eyes that looked at him with a mixture of worry, amazement and, yes, admiration when he had asked:

"Afghanistan or Iraq? »

The doctor had jolted violently, as if the question had brought him back to a world and a past he was trying to forget, had not answered him but had straightened him up gently, had again listened to his heart and had finally released his grip. In a neutral tone where there was nevertheless a controlled vulnerability, John asked:

"Is there anyone who can come and get you, William? I'd prefer you not to be alone tonight. I'm going to give you something to help you, but I would really like to talk to someone close to you. Can you reach a friend? Family? Family? A sister? A brother? "John took his phone out of his pocket, as if he wanted to call someone, approached Sherlock and made a vague gesture towards the door behind which he had sent Sally and the two bodyguards back. "I don't think your two... "he hesitated about the term to use,"... your two companions may be of great help to you tonight, and you really need to rest and be calm. Your friend, Gregory, is fine," added John, who understood Sherlock's silent question.   "We just need to watch him for a few hours, it's not for him but for you that I'm worried. You have to sleep, stop swallowing everything and anything, take care of yourself, William.... »

"Sherlock"

"I beg your pardon?" asked John, who, obviously confused, did not understand.

"It's not William, it's Sherlock," replied the musician, and as he said these words, he had leaned his two hands on the doctor's chest to free himself from his wrist. With a movement less flexible than usual and wobbly a little, he nevertheless stood up. "Thank you for your advice, Doctor," he added in a tone that John felt ironic, "and since we're talking about sleep, John - his eyes had slipped on the badge attached to the white coat and to the phone John was holding in his hand - you should stop taking too many night shifts to escape your nightmares and Afghan memories... and if you want to take care of someone, I suggest you look at your brother Harry, because he obviously has alcohol problems.

Amazed, John had looked at this stranger who was so fragile and at the same time arrogant and brilliant that he had deduced almost everything from his life in one glance.He had seen him pull up the collar of his coat very high, as if he wanted to hide his face. He had walked through the door with his head down and waved to the two men who were still waiting for him and who immediately framed him. He had crossed the hall in huge strides and, in a whirlwind, had disappeared.

And now, a few hours later, the musician was there, lying on his bed in his silent room. He had just woken up, soaked in sweat, a hand lost, in spite of himself, on his painful sex.   When he left the hospital, he ignored messages from Molly begging him to return to his Belgravia apartment, managed to send home his two bodyguards who grumbled that it was against orders, that he should never be left alone, that Greg would be furious when he woke up and that he would hear about it. To get rid of it, he mumbled that he would be careful, that he would go straight to Baker Street and that he would not go out.

He suddenly pushed the sheet back and forced himself to stand upright, while the unfinished pleasure was still beating in his painfully erect sex. Forcing himself to look away from himself, Sherlock stood up, and automatically looked for eyes on his bedside blister of pills prepared by his staff that helped him to hold on in the senseless rhythm that his life had taken over the past two years, chaining periods of composition, studio recording, promotion, TV sets and tours. But, as he was about to take a stamp, recently heard words suspended his action.

... take care of yourself, William....

Sherlock grumbled, unhappy with himself. Since when did he let himself be influenced? And by a stranger, again, someone he had only seen for an hour?  Moreover, a man who had witnessed an inexcusable moment, he thought, of weakness...  ? What an idea he had to reveal his name to him ! And even if he didn't believe it himself, he thought it wouldn't surprise him if his stay in the hospital would, in the coming days, be like the fat cabbage of the country's bad leaves. 

His blue eyes floated again in front of him, and he turned away, uncomfortable, tense between an unfulfilled desire that was eating away at his nerves and the satisfaction of not having given in to a manifest state of withdrawal.

Sighing, wearing a dressing gown that did not cover his ever-present erection, he headed for the kitchen that opened at the back of the living room and made himself a cup of tea. As he pulled a mug out of the closet, he froze on himself. When was the last time he did this simple task? He realized that he was constantly surrounded, at the best of times by his loved ones, Greg - and when his agent was mentioned, his heart twisted with grief - and his assistant, little Molly, so devoted.But more often than not, it was a whole team more or less anonymous that gravitated around him and added to this feeling of inconsistency that had become his existence since Victor... He refrained from going further in this direction and, warming his hands against the burning mug, he sat in an armchair in front of the fireplace, his eyes in the wave, fixed towards the half-burned logs. He still had the unpleasant feeling of his sex half deflated now, but which did not allow him to forget the face of this unknown and yet already so familiar doctor because of whom he had obviously woken up, a burning heat devouring his intimacy.

Yes, he thought to himself, his team surrounded him, cuddled him, passed everything to him.  Anger, whims, meds, sarcasm...  And why is that?  All he was asked to do was to compose, to search deep inside himself for the melodies that would captivate the hearts, that would ignite the crowds, that would be on everyone's lips for months. He had a gift, they told him. If he often proved incapable of establishing the slightest bond of friendship, even simple camaraderie, the music he composed and his low and vibrant voice compensated everything, established a perfect osmosis between him and his audience, went straight to the hearts of people, were able to make them dance, cry, love and live.

Composing had always been his major asset, it was what allowed his mind always in motion to finally calm down. When the inspiration was there, for days, he didn't say a word, completely lost in his inner music. He was no longer eating, no longer sleeping, to Greg's great despair as he tried to at least make him swallow tea and toast from time to time.  He loved more than anything to stand in front of the living room window of this improbable and bizarre apartment, adorned with a thousand disparate and baroque objects. He would slip his Strad, a gift from his brother Mycroft, under his chin and for hours, days and days, the bow would twirl on the strings in the most exquisite way and give birth to melodies each more vibrant than the next. It was there in this tiny apartment on Baker Street that he composed his greatest hits, those that had established him nationally and made him the driving force behind Underground Records, the Major of the powerful Charles Augustus Magnussen. 

Pushing as far as possible the image of this hated man, but whom he was forced to suffer, placing his mug on the coffee table, closing his eyes, singing for himself, Sherlock allowed himself to follow the melodic line that had been floating in him for a few days already, before the fiasco of the concert at the Palladium.His fingers were tapping the armrest of the chair in rhythm, looking for the third party that would give the final touch to the measures already imagined. For a few minutes, it was there, within his reach, as bright and luminous as the doctor's appearance had been the day before, whose slightly wedge-shaped smile had not really left him.

But the hope of finding the saving notes was short-lived. Already, they had flown away, fleeting and misleading. He knew that if he had had the courage to take his violin, he could have found it easier to find those few measures he was missing. But it was now a gesture that he had been forbidding himself since Victor. He only composed on an electronic keyboard that he knew intimately that it did not correspond to his mode of creation. Since the events, to the great despair of his brother and Greg, he had not touched his instrument.

With a moan of impotence, Sherlock stood up suddenly. He was dying to take a cigarette, a pill, anything to get through the anxiety and guilt that was crackling in him. He checked his cell phone again to see if Sally, as she had promised him the night before, had sent him any news of Greg. But the screen remained inexorably blank of any notifications.  At the height of his frustration, he headed for his bathroom. At the end of his nerves, he slipped the dressing gown off his shoulders. The reflection of his naked body in the mirror struck him painfully. He found himself ugly, damaged. He was scary. In fact, that's what Greg told him backstage at the Palladium; he knew it was to make him react. His agent was not wrong. He had to admit it. Months of chaotic sleep, skipped meals, pills swallowed wrongly and through had dug his features, his chest, his stomach, had slimmed his shoulders and thighs. Almost in spite of himself, he put his hand over his throat and then through his brown hair.

_Further back, Sherlock, that's right, keep going_

In a vertigo, he heard Victor's hand slamming on his skin, whispering orders in his ear when he hugged him from behind. Suddenly, he hated himself even more. Wouldn't he finish with ghosts anymore? Would he remain a prisoner of his demons of the past? Today, it was the life he wanted. It was the energy that the crowd sent back to him when he was on stage that he wanted. It was the feeling of music being born and flowing in him whose source he had to find. And for that, he knew it, it was the osmosis of a body against his own that he was burning to feel again. Like a background wave, the image of Dr. John Watson's charming smile overlapped with the reflection of his face reflected from the mirror. At the end of frustration and anger against himself, filled with a desire he could not explain for this man he had only seen once, Sherlock threw his fist into the glass which broke sharply under the force of the blow.

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

His shift had ended without any problems. The night had passed in the usual whirling of anonymous patients and familiar distress between frightened children, worried mothers, anxious looks and silent questions. And as usual, his hands and words had soothed, reassured, healed.  By providing these always useful gestures, he found a form of appeasement. At those times, Dr. John Watson didn't need to wonder why he was still there, while so many others hadn't returned from the bloody dunes of the Afghan desert.

But while John, once his guard was finished, crossed the misty park at dawn, which brought him back to his apartment, he could not stop his mind from constantly returning to this man who - he had not yet understood how - had deduced from a sharp look his nightmare nights and family alcoholism. He was not sure whether anger should prevail over worry and surprise. William's condition - no, Sherlock, since the young man had corrected the information on his own - was of concern to him, of course. He had left alone, obviously very shocked by his friend's accident and under the influence of certain dangerous products. John had detected, when he examined him, old but very recognizable traces of injections. He was in trouble, it was obvious. The doctor could still hear, amplified by his stethoscope, Sherlock's heartbeat and panicky breathing, which he had only managed to calm by asking him to follow his own rhythm.  

But in the end, it was a certain form of glare that dominated John, despite - or because of - the arrogance and acuity of the character. And although he absolutely did not want to admit it to himself, the singular beauty of the young man had struck him and his face with angular features still pursued him tenaciously in thought, while his sight was blurred by the gusts that shook the park trees and the wind blew sand on the deserted alleys in that early winter morning, bringing back memories of other dawns and other faces.

_Fayaz... No, Christ please, not that..._

Dissatisfied with himself for giving in so easily to painful images, exhausted by his night's work, John had difficulty climbing the steps leading to his floor. Repelling the desire to open his computer keyboard to go to his blog, he got rid of his jacket and shoes. Barefoot, he went to the kitchen and lit the kettle. As the scent of a powerful Assam spread throughout the room, he sat in the chair facing the window. It was the most difficult time for him, the moment when fatigue and the absence of a task to accomplish left him alone in front of himself. 

At a mechanical glance, he looked at the ritual that Ella asked him to keep within sight, like a talisman to hold on to when he felt he was leaving for another place to which he did not have to or wanted to give in. That morning, this routine was more than necessary. Already, he had not respected the breakfast stage, contenting himself with a hot tea. He had immediately avoided the idea of preparing a complete meal, vaguely nauseous because of the exhaustion of his sleepless night. Even simple toasts seemed inappropriate to him. He knew that the next step was the shower. At the thought of having to get rid of his hospital outfit that he had kept on him and face the mirror in the white light of his bathroom that would reflect the image of his injured body and tired eyes, he decided to take a little more time to sip his tea.

Half curled up in the chair, John picked up his phone and connected to his twitter account. He had gained more than fifty subscribers since the day before. Apparently, the new text he had put on his blog was a hit. The disappearance of a young soldier in Mazâr-e-Sharif a few days earlier had shaken public opinion and, on social networks, people had seized photos and texts in tribute to the young man. SoldierForEver, one of his loyal subscribers, had left him, as usual, a poignant message to which he endeavoured to reply. And while he was singing an answer, the irresistible desire, irrigated by the tension and exhaustion of the night, to put even more words to the drama swept through him. Leaving his laptop, he opened his computer, found the page of his blog and started typing. Words flooded the blank page without his even being aware of it.

_I caress your absence_

_The mountains and wandering_

_And then the boredom_

_The river looks like you_

_At least in appearance_

_Yet you're running away_

 

As the words were writing on their own, John knew immediately that they were not addressing this young soldier, whom he had intended to mention. While, uncomfortable, he reread the words, he could not help but see, in an almost shocking clarity, Sherlock's long silhouette disappear and flee into the night. He felt a sudden heat spreading first on his face, while a fleeting wave, of which he did not know exactly what it was made of, was born deep inside his belly. He closed the keyboard of his computer dryly, while he felt his hands shaking slightly. Sherlock's face continued to float in him, his bright eyes piercing him, reading everything he was with extreme ease.

Uncomfortable with himself, John took up his phone again, taking a mechanical look at the Twitter trends of the moment, as if to screen out those diffuse thoughts that made him shiver without him perceiving the reasons. Suddenly, the #Sherlock hashtag flooded his screen.

**#Sherlock, the fallen star**

**#Sherlock played divas again at the Palladium**

**The failed #Sherlock concert**

**Thank you for ruining my birthday party, #Sherlock.**

**The agent of #Sherlock pushed to suicide by the singer**

 

John, amazed, scrolled through the tweets, his hands sweaty. He couldn't believe his eyes. Suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle came together. He understood in a split second why someone had tried to hide the identity of the young man, the presence of bodyguards, the face hidden in the collar of the coat. New tweets came along, each more hateful than the next. It was a flood of violence and insults that John then discovered with surprise. The forced distance of the last three years had prevented him from becoming aware of the musician's notoriety and escapades. The name Sherlock Holmes meant almost nothing to him, and in any case, if he had very vague feelings of having heard it one day, he didn't connect it with that of a rock star.  With his heart racing, he switched from Twitter to the web and fell on the singer's Facebook pages. There, the "Sherlock, we love you" replaced the insulting words but if these pages reflected the passion of the fans, they also revealed in hollow the immense pressure that was weighing on the artist.

_No wonder he's so fragile._

Quickly, John typed into the browser Sherlock Holmes and arrived on the musician's website, sciencedurock.com. What he discovered was a thousand miles from what one could expect to find. It was not the agreed list of concert dates and albums already published or to come out, but entire pages devoted to research on the different trends in English conceptual rock, as if this site was not an emanation of the artist's promotion but rather a completely personal content. It was not surprising, given the demands and severity of the subject, that the visit marker was so weak, John thought, more and more intrigued.

A brief search led the doctor to Instagram. A tidal wave of clichés then swept across the screen of his laptop. Sherlock on stage, eyes closed, air inhabited. Sherlock at a press conference, Gregory Lestrade's arm surrounding his shoulders, as if he wanted to protect him.  Sherlock in the studio, headphones on his ears smiling at a man as tall as him, in a three-piece suit leaning on an improbable umbrella. Sherlock, looking tense, beside a very blond man with golden glasses who had laid his hand on the musician's hand.  Sherlock standing, head a little bent, chin resting on an electric blue violin. Sherlock, reddened eyes, exhausted air, coming out of a box. A photo, obviously stolen, then caught John's eye. A young man stood behind Sherlock, very stiff, pale in colour; he embraced her possessively, his lips placed at ear level; it seemed as if Sherlock was trying to free himself from an embrace he didn't want. This last cliché, more than anything he had just discovered, upset John, without him understanding the reasons for the unease that was growing in him. 

On Tumblr, where he hosted his own blog, he found, instead of press photos, fanarts evoking Sherlock.   Most of them were drawings that celebrated and revealed the beauty of the musician's body, his slimness, the paleness of his complexion, his flexibility.  John blushed in front of one of them where Sherlock had been pencilled naked on a sofa. The doctor suddenly closed his phone, walked to the bathroom and got rid of his hospital clothes. His heart was racing. He finally dared to raise his face and contemplated himself in the mirror. His own reflection surprised him. His eyes, so tired for months, shone with emotions that he could not explain and a redness had spread to his face. And as he looked at himself, as if he was seeing someone he didn't recognize, intense heat spread to his stomach. 

_Really, John ?_

What he saw in the mirror was no longer the wounded soldier.  What he was contemplating in the smile on his face was the irresistible desire to see Sherlock again, to make sure he was fine, to stop the spiral in which the musician seemed to be getting damaged, to take him in his arms and, finally, to put his lips on his own. 

All he had to do was cross the abyss that separated him from the rock star.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Revelations

**Just landed. Going to get Greg. CAM furious. So am I. MH**

In the taxi taking him to Camden, Mycroft Holmes closed his phone with a dry gesture and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket.  He knew he wouldn't get an answer anyway. He didn't expect it. The explanation would come later, as would the decisions that would have to be made.  There would be a price to pay for all this.  We didn't just sweep away Charles Augustus Magnussen's plans and will. The humiliation Sherlock had caused him, the debacle at the Palladium, would be punished. It was only a matter of time and imagination. Mycroft was convinced of it. 

The last few days had been a nightmare. Even though he had signed a contract in Los Angeles with a promising artist for his label, Strad Records, what happened in London at the Palladium had finished cracking the bastion he was trying to build around his brother, to protect him from the outside world and especially from himself. The flight from the west coast of the United States to England was several hours late; he missed the connection in New York; the wifi connection on board the plane was non-existent. It was only by landing in Heathrow that he was able to reach his assistant, Anthea, who had stayed in London.  Sherlock, invisible, was hiding on Baker Street. Greg was safe, but seriously injured. Sally had managed to get him out of the hospital fairly quickly and had repatriated him to her apartment in Camden, under her promise to a certain Dr. Watson to watch him and keep him warm and calm for a week.

But despite the news that Sally had tried to give him in a reassuring tone, Mycroft felt his hands shaking on the phone screen as he sent a message to Sherlock. In the intertwined web of emotions that overwhelmed him at that time, because, of course, his apparent impassivity was only a façade, he did not know which one, anger or anguish, outweighed the other. Of course, he was exasperated against his brother. The press was raging about the fiasco of the cancelled concert, about what they called the whims of a star who despised the audience.   But beyond the scandal, the financial losses, the destruction of the artist's image, it was Charles Augustus Magnussen's cold rage that worried him beyond measure. Underground's powerful boss had expressed his dissatisfaction in his own way, detached, cold, terrifying. 

Yet, at that very moment, it was not Magnussen who occupied Mycroft's mind.  Nor was it Sherlock who, in any case, had not replied to his message. With a pounding heart, Mycroft got out of the taxi that had stopped in front of the building where Sally lived in Camden. He greeted the caretaker from afar, who discreetly watched the surroundings of the upscale home in this trendy London district and rushed into the elevator that took him to the top floor of the residence in one fell swoop. Sally was waiting for him at the door already ajar.  A quick circular glance revealed to him that the young woman had sent the team back close and that she was alone.  Mycroft hastily dropped his travel bag and umbrella. Urgently, with his heart on the edge of his lips, he looked at the young woman.  He hadn't even had time to ask for anything when she whispered to him in a very low voice:

"I think he's still asleep, Mycroft. We must be quiet. Dr. Watson said he was very shaken up, that he needed to rest as much as possible. » 

But Mycroft was already no longer listening to **her** and had entered the room where his companion was lying. A blow to his stomach grabbed him when, in the darkness, he saw Greg's marked face, a wide bandage covering one of his temples.  His eyes were closed, his complexion earthy.  You could barely hear him breathing. Mycroft fell to his knees to get to bed level, grabbed his hand too hot and carried it to his lips, while he felt his own heart beating painfully in his throat. And as he kissed Greg's thin wrist skin, with his right hand he gently pushed back the strands of hair that the fever had stuck to the wounded man's forehead while his left index finger had landed on his carotid artery, as if to make sure that life was there.  Words were rushing without order on his lips, in an overload of anxiety held back since he had received the message asking him to return to London urgently.

"Greg, it's me, it's Myc, I love you, Greg, I'm here, it's okay, Greg, talk to me, my love, please, I love you, I love you, I love you..."

And as he felt the tears dangerously flush against his eyelids, without being able to repress the wave of emotion that was rising inside him, he felt Greg shaking under the gentle gesture of his hand and, before he could even try to calm him, Greg had opened his eyes, grabbed Mycroft's wrist and tried to straighten himself up.

"Myc," whispered a voice that pain and exhaustion weakened, is that you? Are you there? Are you there? Are you back? Tell me if Sherlock..." 

It was too much for Mycroft, no matter what promise he had made to himself to keep calm.  

"No, Greg, stop with Sherlock," he said in an exasperated and almost harsh voice. "It's about you. You're the one who fell, you're the one who's hurt, you're the one who almost did it this time..." But Mycroft stopped just in time. As his companion leaned against the pillows that supported him again, Mycroft continued more gently. "You'll worry about Sherlock later..."

"But Myc," Greg tried again, "do you even know where... He had opened his eyes again and his gaze, still disoriented, was looking for his companion in the hope of an answer.  

"No, Greg," he repeated. "Right now, I want you to think only of yourself.  Tell me how you feel; does it hurt? Do you want a drink? "But without waiting for the answer, Mycroft, stretched to the extreme, turned feverishly to the door and called Greg's young assistant. Any trace of emotion carefully hidden, as usual, he continued, in a now dry and almost professional voice. "Sally, show me the hospital prescription. What did the emergency doctor say?  What's his name again?  Was it just an intern or a senior doctor? Get me his phone number. Can Greg be transported? Did he take his medication? Call Anthea. Arrange a transfer. Now. In an hour at the latest, I'm taking Gregory home. Did you understand?" he asked in a voice that anxiety made people crackle. "I want to take Gregory home," he repeated, as if words had the power to fix everything.  And in this last statement, it was a whole closed and protected world that Mycroft wanted to build around Greg, to erase the hours that had just passed, the danger, madness and death that had lurked around.  

Once Greg is safe in their apartment, it's time to think about Sherlock. A glance at his mobile phone showed him that his brother had not answered. Mycroft Holmes had always been concerned about his younger brother's disproportionate size. There had always been dark outbursts at Sherlock's that were compensated by incredible fulgurations. Mycroft had had the fleeting hope that the musician's success and even more so the recognition of his peers for the original talent shown in his compositions would reconcile the young man with himself. But the inner torments, the immense precision of his sharp mind, and even more, his self-proclaimed lack of empathy had led him on a path long marked by the darkest forces. There had indeed been an unexpected moment of grace, the one during which, for a few months, the Welsh painter Victor Trevor had invited himself into Sherlock's already eventful life. The young musician had suddenly opened himself to the world. All it took was a kiss to the full mouth one concert evening in an overheated dressing room for the lonely young man to metamorphose. It was enough for Victor to look at him, and suddenly, the doubts, the questions seemed to have disappeared. The couple, who had remained hidden for a few weeks, made the headlines very quickly. Victor looked straight into the photographers' objectives, compelling, seductive, manipulative.  On the pictures, Sherlock's eyes were shining. But the magic only lasted for one season, the time of the imposture. Within a few weeks, Victor's influence over the musician had reached new heights. 

Mycroft winced at the ever-present memory of that morning when he discovered his brother shivering, naked, in front of a canvas that the painter, probably in a fit of anger, had torn to pieces. Victor, whom Sherlock's singular beauty had attracted more than anything else, had become accustomed to having the young musician pose for him, stripping his body naked, demanding ever more shamelessness. That day, the broken bow of the violin lay indecently next to the young man. A purple mark marked his chest. And then... it only got worse.  Chasing the terrible evocation out of his mind, Mycroft returned to Greg and again softened his voice, full of solicitude. He leaned towards his companion who was looking at him, his eyes fogged with suffering.  

"Come on, my love, we're going home; I'll take care of you; get up a little... Here, put your arm around my neck... That's it, that's good. Easy, easy… »

"Myc, I have to tell you...", Greg began, obviously agitated. 

"Shh... Don't talk, Greg, you're as white as a sheet... Shhhhhhh... You'll tire yourself out for nothing," Mycroft whispered, caressing his companion's neck with a gesture he wanted to soothe and supporting him firmly, after having put an arm behind his burning back to help him get up. 

But Greg grabbed Mycroft's chin with one hand to force him to look at him and he picked up again in an urgent voice. 

"Myc, listen to me, please. It's about Sherlock. I wish I had told you, I should have told you..."

Mycroft suddenly felt his palms getting even more sweaty, his heart going up his throat and beating madly. And as he looked at Greg, already feeling that what he was about to learn was what he feared most, he heard his companion whisper in a barely perceptible voice what he already knew, anyway, deep inside himself:    

"Sherlock... he has..." and Greg took a long break as if he wanted to delay the blow he was going to give to the man he loved, "Myc, your brother has fallen back. » 

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Exasperated, Sherlock erased his brother's message. It was something he often did.  He had had enough of this close, continuous surveillance since he was a child. He knew that Mycroft had excellent reasons to keep an eye on him at all times. Anyway, he always had the intimate feeling that no one trusted him. Molly, his personal assistant, had also tried to reach him. He had turned a deaf ear. Baker Street was his haven, his secret garden. Not even Victor had set foot in it. Their encounters, their nights, those in which the painter demanded everything from him, those in which his body no longer belonged to him and became the object of his partner, had always taken place in the artist's studio in Notting Hill.  Baker Street was Sherlock's sanctuary. Only the very close ones, his brother, Greg and Molly, were usually admitted. 

But a few hours later, that day, the whole team arrived without warning.  Molly of course, but also the number two of Underground records, Sebastian Moran, Magnussen's handyman, always confined to lowly works.  Tom and Fred, his bodyguards had made their reappearance, discreet, solid, always there when it was necessary... and also when it was not necessary. Two real pots of glue.  And then there was Kitty Reilly, the press secretary, on the phone, flanked by her own secretary. The physiotherapist and the coach had arrived last, with, on their shoulders, the Underground communication manager and the two trainees who never left him.   The apartment was crowded.  It was unbearable. Sherlock would have given anything to sneak into his room and find some silence. His whole body was screaming at him to get what he needed from the drawer at his bedside. The musician wiped the palm of his wet hands on the blue silk of his long robe and tried a discreet escape. But Molly, who was on her way to the kitchen to make tea, blocked his way.   Moran, on the other hand, had set up on the sofa to start a videoconference with the Major's artistic director. It was about the arrangements on the current album and especially on the track Mine. He kept looking at Sherlock with cold eyes, disgusted. 

"Don't complain," Molly slipped (Molly) in his ear as she took him with her to the kitchen, "I avoided you Moriarty. Mr. Magnussen wanted him to come. But I managed...," she added, squinting at her mouse snout. Sherlock waved at her a little waving as he pointed to the others. 

"Can you explain all this to me, Molly? How could you let that happen? "he asked his assistant in a low, angry voice as she prepared mugs and tea for everyone. "You know I don't want anyone here... here is... here is... it's... at home" and as he was talking, he felt his own voice starting to derail, to rise higher under the influence of irritation, under the influence of a tension he couldn't control.  

"Look, Sherlock," she began blushing, "you know... what happened at the Palladium... You really unlocked. We had to put the guys out of work technically. The musicians are furious. For them, this is a big loss of income. And then you watched the news...? "Molly was spouting the sentences at full speed, without looking at Sherlock, as if she was unpacking a ready-made speech.  "Everyone is worried about you.  We want you... to... not care about anything..., nothing but music.   You know, there are deadlines, important deadlines that will come very quickly. Voting for the Brits Awards will begin soon. Mr Magnussen said we needed a roadmap... that's why we're here... to see how we'll do in the next few days without Greg. Sally will take over, she should arrive soon, once your brother and Greg... well, you know, no need to go into details.  » 

Sherlock, with a raging helping hand, swung the teapot to the ground, the boiling water splashing his hand, without him noticing at that moment. 

"Oh yes... I see..." and he turned to the others who had suddenly all fallen silent when he heard the porcelain smashing on the floor..." Are you here so I can be the good little soldier?  That I'm in line? Is that it? Is that it? "And he began to imitate Moriarty's Irish accent. "Lower, Sherlock, lower... move your hips... Is that what you want? "Sherlock continued with his usual voice. "Tube, smiles... that I obey everything? » 

The physiotherapist tried to move towards him, hands forward, in a gesture of appeasement. 

"But no, Sherlock, you're wrong, we just want to help you through this moment..."

"What moment?" scolded the musician as he cut him off, do you think I don't see your little game? "he added in a voice that rage made it more acute now. You think I'm losing it because Vic..." but he stopped suddenly, unable to pronounce the whole name. "...Because, he continued, I haven't composed since..." In his own despair, Sherlock heard himself stop suddenly, looking for his breath. He was going to continue when Moran, Magnussen's right-hand man, cut him off in a bad voice. 

"All Mr. Magnussen wants", and he insisted heavily on this last word, "all he wants is for you and Moriarty to present the title Mine at the Awards, hand in hand, the composer and the author. He wants the Song of the Year Award and that's what he'll get. You know his methods.  What he wants, he gets. Always. All you have to do is put the means into it.   Besides, I came up with a tight promotion plan, starting next Monday. Kitty, would you like to present the rollout? »

The press officer then meekly handed a file to the musician.  "Eight weeks of non-stop TV and radio coverage. Makeover in two weeks.  Visit a high school, with your Birmingham fan club. Appearance in two fashion shows this week. Ah, you also have a promotion day planned in Ireland and another one in Scotland. "But Moran interrupted the young woman with a voice that suffered no remark.

"While I think about it, Sherlock, the image staff wants you with three kilos more, because that's no longer possible..." he said, making a gesture with his hand towards Sherlock who, under the attack, draped himself more in his blue silk dressing gown, as if to steal his silhouette too angular from the looks that were all fixed towards him, turning away from everyone and fixing an invisible point in the street through the window.  "Molly, bring him breakfast, eggs, toast... anything. I want to see him eat something before I leave," Moran continued, as if Sherlock wasn't there to hear. 

If Tom and Fred hadn't been there to hold him, Sherlock, hearing Moran's last words, would have rushed at him, but he just had a little contemptuous laugh. 

"So what, Sherlock, you're not hungry or it's the idea of making Mr. Magnussen happy that stays in your way...? "The man headed towards Sherlock whom his two bodyguards were holding back and, as the musician's eyes shone with rage, Moran approached very close to him and, breathing hard, his nostrils swollen, he slipped in his ear so no one would hear, "You know Mr. Magnussen has enough to make you...," he paused and took it up again, "make you obey, Sherlock, I don't need to remind you what he holds at Appledore, do I? ».  Then Moran stepped back and threw to the cantonade, this time for everyone, with a false laugh.

"Toast, eggs or both, Mr. Sherlock Holmes? »

It was as if a threatening signal had been given. Moran replied in a frosty voice, waving to everyone to prepare to leave, with a condescending gesture of the hand. 

"Molly, I want a report every day. Tom and Fred, you're not leaving him for more than a minute. Sally will take care of the logistics until Lestrade is handed over. By the way, Sherlock," Moran continued, "and it was the last final blow he gave the young man, "you would have wanted to get rid of your agent that you wouldn't have done otherwise... I heard he almost died, you know? » 

Sherlock's closed lips let a hoarse moan pass, made of distress and anger mixed while the apartment was emptying. In less than five minutes, there was only Molly in the living room. Everyone else was gone. Tom and Fred had positioned themselves at the foot of the small building where, as usual, some fans were camping, hoping to see their idol and tear off a picture and an autograph. 

Molly approached the musician who, since Moran had slipped a few words in his ear, seemed to have petrified on the spot, any colour having left his face. The young woman tried to put her hand on the musician's shoulder, who jumped violently when she felt Molly's fingers touching him. 

"Oh... Sherlock," she tried in a clumsy voice and finally uncomfortable, "we know very well that for Greg, it's not your... But she did not have the opportunity to continue. Sherlock had already turned away and rushed into his room. The only sounds that echoed the young assistant were those of a double-turned latch and a computer cover being opened suddenly. 

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

John couldn't help but think about Sherlock over and over again as he walked through the park to the clinic. It had been a complicated night. You can't sleep in your room. He had taken over the sofa, facing the door, as always, and for hours he had turned and turned inside him the flood of information that the web had poured into him about Sherlock. He knew intimately that he had not dreamt the burning look Sherlock had given him at the hospital. It was neither a plea nor an invitation, but a question that certainly only required an answer.  At the end of his strength, John had finally fallen asleep from a rough sleep from which he had woken up more confused than ever with the irrepressible desire and that he did not always explain to himself to do anything to find this man who had been put on his way by chance. His bruised shoulder hurt him more than usual. But a wave of burning heat had spread through (her) his belly and had not disappeared. 

In the morning, his guard at the clinic had been very harsh. A mother had presented with her baby, in an advanced state of malnutrition and with pneumonia that he had had to carry for several days. The small burning body, the protruding ribs, the piercing screams had brutally sent John back to the worst moments of the capture of the village of Châârnafi from the Taliban. These were the complaints of Fayaz that he suddenly heard resounding in him, those he had perceived when, with the men of his group, he found at the end of the village, in the house that the madmen of God had invested, these children taken from their families, hungry, beaten and for Fayaz... even worse than that. It had taken John a huge effort on his part not to suddenly leave the examination room and leave his little patient with another member of the team. Of course, he had held up well. And all morning he had been consulting on consultation after consultation, until the clock delivered and he could rush home, with only one desire in mind, to post on his blog everything that this trying morning had brought out in him.

But because he was honest with himself, John knew that his inspiration that day had little to do with the usual themes that made his blog and twitter feed so successful. Since that improbable encounter with Sherlock at the hospital, since the collision of their eyes, since he felt the young man's panicked pulse and the softness of his wrist under his fingers, the shock of the revelation of his identity had amazed John. But very quickly, under what he had perceived under the musician's success, it was doubts, questions, cracks. It would have been necessary to be blind not to guess through the stories and photos telling the immense talent of the musician, the underlying fragility. His entourage, at least the ones who showed themselves in a few articles that seemed more trustworthy than the others, seemed to destabilize the musician than to support him. The worst pictures were those where Sherlock was seen with the president of Underground Records. Charles Auguste Magnussen always seemed to want to touch Sherlock, hold his hand, his shoulder; on all the pictures, we could see him smiling and approaching his thin mouth to his neck, his ear to whisper something to him. We felt that Sherlock was trying to free himself but that the grip was too strong. The only pictures where the musician did not seem to be trapped were those where he was seen with Gregory Lestrade, the latter friendly surrounding Sherlock with his arm while his eyes shone with affection as he looked at him.

When he arrived in his apartment, John quickly got rid of his jacket, made tea and opened his computer. The counter of his blog had jumped again, since he had posted the text on the young English soldier who had disappeared the previous week. There were hundreds of small messages, sometimes just icons or smileys and of course, as always, reviews of SoldierForEver, so accurate, so poignant that within a minute, with a tight throat, the doctor, when reading them, was unable to catch his breath.  

John stared at the screen, breathed in to catch his breath and pressed the arrow to start a new entry on his blog.He put his hands on the keyboard and closed his eyes. But it was not the sound of Fayaz's crying that he heard in him, it was not the child's brutalized body that imposed itself on his mind, it was not the warm breath of the desert that caressed his face in imagination. It was again and again the same singular face, with prominent cheekbones, the same dancing dark curls, the same sharp eyes that invaded him and, almost in spite of himself, John began to write.

**Hi everyone, thank you for your wonderful comments. Today, I just want to talk to you about someone I just met...**

His fingers flew on the keyboard, without erasure or hesitation, the lines flowing in an unrestrained flow. And while he was writing, he felt, to his own astonishment, a kind of perfection in each of his words, as if he had always had them in him but it took this encounter for them to blossom on the page, as if these were the words and not others that embodied the man he kept thinking of.

_I've been looking everywhere for him._

_I've been around the world_

_I didn't find him and I'm still looking for him._

 

_I don't know anything about him and yet I see him_

_I invented his name, I heard his voice._

_I drew his body and I painted his face_

_His portrait and love are only an image now_

 

_His approach looks like a child's memories_

_Who trot in my head and dance dreaming_

_On his forehead, his buckles are ebony in battle_

_May the wind of the Thames and the sun squabble_

 

_I could tell you about his eyes, his hands._

_I could talk to you about him until tomorrow._

_His love is my life, but what's the point of dreaming?_

_I looked everywhere for him, I didn't find him._

 

_Is he far from here? Is he near me?_

_I don't know yet but I know that there is..._

As soon as John had finished writing, the notifications of comments and "I like" began to flood his mailbox. Overwhelmed by the effort of writing, drowned in a flood of emotions that he did not really understand himself, he slowly closed his keyboard and dropped his head backwards, his eyelids closed, his heart pounding, a heat becoming familiar to the most intimate part of himself, flooding his belly in an almost unbearable expectation. 

 

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

His hand was throwing it. When, the day before, he had punched the mirror in his bathroom with his fist, the force of the blow had lacerated the skin. And earlier the boiling water from the teapot had not helped. The last hour had been terrible. Moran's half-veiled threats, the pressure he felt on others, and above all the immense feeling of guilt he felt towards Greg, who, much more than his agent, had become over the past few years the one who kept him on his own and allowed him, by protecting him from external attacks, to make him express his talent and creativity, had finished undermining his last defenses. While the apartment was filled with the rustling of each other's conversations and Moran's obnoxious words were being heard, he felt an irrepressible need to flee, to withdraw into himself, to seek a moment of peace that he knew, even if it was artificial and temporary, would at least save him some time. He pushed back without saying a word Molly, the only one who hadn't left the apartment, and locked himself in his room. He threw himself on his bed, his temples beating, a vague nausea on the edge of his lips, while he still felt Moran's breath in his ear and the word "obey" resounded in him. It was only after he had swallowed the two pills lying on his bedside that he felt the vice compressing his forehead loosening. The desire to vomit nevertheless remained at the bottom of his throat, increased by the pungent taste of the pills supposed to reduce the anxiety that crackled in him in incoercible waves. 

The pain in his hand kept him from sinking. He remembered very well why the anger he felt towards himself had pushed him to smash the mirror a few hours earlier. He had tried to get rid of the image that was pursuing him, that of this doctor, whose indecipherable blue eyes that carried as much determination as sweetness in them, came back again and again to the forefront, as if it prevented him from thinking, as if it prevented him from being himself.  

Obviously, at first glance, he understood that he was a former military doctor who had returned from the front shortly before. There was a stiffness in his posture that did not deceive. The rigidity of the shoulders demonstrated both the long habit of the posture required by the function and the reason for its removal. He had been wounded. His left shoulder was still painful, weeks after demobilization. It was obvious from the way he was throwing his back a little bit. The dark circles, the thinness under the coat, the imperceptible claudication had, in a moment, revealed to him the difficult nights haunted by nightmares and empty, meaningless days. But the extreme precision of the hands, the economy of the gestures spoke for themselves and told of the expeditions in the desert and the number of soldiers cared for in the sand. 

Sherlock breathed a long sigh of frustration. Knowing the past was so easy... But in the end, it wasn't what interested him, any more than the family history of the doctor, that alcoholic Harry whose shaky hands had damaged the phone. No, what Sherlock wanted, what he wanted more than anything to know, was the John Watson of today. The badge he wore on his gown had revealed to him a first name, a surname and his status as a junior emergency doctor. When the doctor asked Sherlock if he wanted to reach a relative and took out his phone, the musician, whose sense of usual observation was multiplied at that time by the incomprehensible attraction he felt, noticed, not without some surprise, that the screen was frozen on the home page of a certain @JHW's twitter account followed by 167425 followers. For a recently demobilized doctor, that was a lot. 

Mechanically rubbing his hand whose lacerated skin was throwing it, Sherlock suddenly opened the lid of his computer. He locked himself in his room, away from Molly's worried eyes, and lay on his bed, after taking the two pills he absolutely needed to let the odious scene with Moran pass. He already felt the effects of the pills. He knew he shouldn't have taken them, he knew he was playing with fire, but these pills had become more than indispensable to him. The musician pushed the unpleasant idea of any kind of dependence very far back into him and slipped halfway under the down. He was always either too hot or too cold when he took them and he already felt the chills grabbing him.  Sherlock then brought his dressing gown as close as possible to him and, leaning against two pillows, the computer resting on his half-bent legs, he logged on to his own twitter account. He used to distribute tweets at more or less irregular intervals, whose humour delighted his fans.  His favorite hashtag #ohwhatawonderfulworld scratched with an often cruel verve the banalities, sterile polemics and hypocrisies that circulated in the music world. 

But today, nestled under the down, as the chills increased and he felt his heart beating too fast again under the effect of the substances he had just taken, the musician did not hesitate to respond to the disappointed tweets of his fans following the failed concert at the Palladium, he typed directly the ID he had seen on Dr. Watson's phone, asking himself once again what the H could well mean.

_John Henry Watson?? John Harry Watson? John Watson, the Hero?_

What could a medical officer, who had only recently returned home, write such a talented letter to be followed by so many followers? Since Sherlock had seen the number of subscribers, the counter had risen again. The doctor's profile was surprisingly simple and fit in three words, Doctor. Soldier. Author. The last word plunged Sherlock into an immense perplexity.  

_John, do you write? But what? Tell me, I want to know._

A thin smile stretched across Sherlock's lips when he saw a rainbow flag complete this publication. He was not mistaken... But he did not dwell on what was no longer a revelation. It would be time later to explore this path.  The musician preferred to focus on the pinned tweet that had been loved and retweeted several thousand times. It was so simple and heartbreaking that Sherlock felt his throat tighten. 

_Goodbye, my brother,_

_I'm a dreamer and when I wake up,_

_I don't want to believe that the war took you_

_I know your fears, I know mine too much._

_I don't want to live without you._

Sherlock then slowly scrolled the screen.  The last tweets were a few hours ago.  

_Hi everyone, thank you for your wonderful comments. Today, I just want to talk to you about someone I just met._

The most recent one hit Sherlock in the heart:

_His approach looks like a child's memories_

_Who trot in my head and dance dreaming_

_On his forehead, his buckles are ebony in battle_

_May the wind of the Thames and the sun squabble_

Was it a coincidence? Could the doctor evoke an encounter other than their own through these words that portrayed the musician?  Sherlock felt his heartbeat accelerate even faster. He had not invented the gentleness of this doctor, his brilliant look, his questioning smile, his poorly concealed worry.  Nor had he invented this which, irrepressibly, had been tapping him since that first moment.   He needed to know for sure. He closed the lid of his computer, got up from his bed and left his room. The apartment was dark. Apparently, Molly had gone down to do some shopping. Sherlock headed for the entrance and found his high-collar Belstaff hanging from the coat rack, protecting him from looks when he was on the street. What Sherlock was looking for was, in the pocket of his coat still wet from the rain, the little piece of paper that Sally had slipped into his just before he left the hospital and on which she had collected the doctor's phone number.

_Sherlock, keep this number in case..._

Sherlock, the wet paper clutched in his hand, returned to the living room. Molly must have lit a fire in the fireplace when he was in his room because embers were glowing in the hearth. Strangely enough, Sherlock felt better. The inner shivers had left him. It was even hot. He got rid of his shirt and sat on the floor, bare feet and chest, in front of the fireplace, hands crossed under his chin, facing the flames, still thinking intensely about those few minutes when Dr. Watson had laid him down and made him breathe deeply. The doctor took Sherlock's hand and put it on his own chest. He still heard his words: 

_"There you go, William, do as I do, slowly. »_

And he had guided him patiently, for a long time... Did he suspect that Sherlock, fascinated, was already taking the measure, without knowing it himself, of his heart?  

Sherlock grabs his phone. He quickly created a new contact and fidgeted a short message. 

_I was wounded in the hand. Meet me on the docks, in front of the Baths. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same."  SH_

On the other side of town, John Watson, lying on the sofa facing the door, with his palm tightened on the stock of his gun, saw his mobile phone screen light up and reveal a message that initially left him in extreme perplexity. The sight of the signature made his heart jump.  An uncertain smile appeared on his lips. 

 

 

**John's texts are inspired from Michel Legrand and James Blunt.**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
